Browsing through Sam Flax, an awesome art store in Atlanta and Orlando, I am always drawn to the specialty paper they offer.  Envelopments always stands out and takes the lead among so many choices. Not only do I love their beautiful product offerings, their customer service is pretty top notch too.

They have introduced some fun new products such as Roll-O-Decks, Note Card Sets, and Artist’s Pads.

My favorite of the 12 Note Card Sets are:

Country Club

Classic

French Cafe

You can choose from 12 stunning designs here.

Each set comes with 8 3.5 x 5 folded cards, 8 envelopes and 8 optional envelope liners.

This week, Envelopments is graciously giving away any 3 sets of your favorite note cards to one lucky winner! You can give as a gift or keep for yourself. Nothing beats a handwritten note card!

Here is how you can win.

Giveaway Guidelines:

- You have 6 days to enter this giveaway (closes Wednesday, December 15 at midnight).
- Go to shop.envelopments.com/pages/note-card-sets and pick out notecard sets that you love. Comment here and let me know.
- Make sure you enter all your information! No anonymous commenters please.
- Comments on other sites will not count. Increase your chance to win by doing all of the above.
- If for some reason you are unable to comment on the box, please email comments to: info@cobblestonerueblog.com

- The winner will be chosen and announced on Thursday, December 16 at the bottom of this post.

For more information, visit their shop: http://shop.envelopments.com

website: http://www.envelopments.com

blog: http://blog.envelopments.com

The winner is:

From Amanda:

In no particular order, these are the things we did EVERY YEAR at home. I am a complete nut when it comes to Christmas. Just ask my parents, and especially my brother. They think I’m a little bit crazy, too.

1. Load up entire family + aunts, uncles, cousins and drive around looking at Christmas lights the week after Thanksgiving. While we were out, we would go and buy our fresh Christmas trees for each home and we (kids) would all eat candy canes and giggle our heads off.

2. Kids receive a new ornament every year that relates to something special about them for that last year. (Example: Freshman year of H.S., I sewed my first dress and my mom gave me a sewing machine ornament that year. This year, Maddox gets a Lego ball to hang on the tree and Maggie gets a little puppy dog. Her obsession.)

3. ALWAYS leave out milk and cookies on a special plate w/ a special mug for Santa on Christmas Eve. It was always gone when we woke up the next morning. We do it with our kids now.

4. On Christmas Eve (when we still believed in Santa) my dad would have a friend hide outside our house somewhere and ring sleigh bells. If there were plane lights in the sky it was even better. :) He would tell us to hurry and get to bed b/c Santa was waiting to come while we were asleep. Such a good memory!

5. Mayfield’s Peppermint Ice Cream – a must!!!!!!

6. No presents under the tree for kids until after they are asleep on Christmas Eve. Even now that I’m married, my Mom wont put the gifts for ME or my kids out until we are upstairs. It’s so exciting to go to sleep w/ an empty tree and wake up to that magnificent goodness of presents all over the place. Magical!!

7. My brother and I would always sleep in the same room together on Christmas Eve (even until I moved away and got married). I would get overly excited and couldn’t go to sleep, so my dear younger brother would play board games and talk to me until I fell asleep. (I tend to squeal a lot on Christmas Eve. The excitement is too much to handle!) We could see the shadows of our parents going back and forth down the hall, hauling gifts to the tree downstairs. We were forbidden from opening the door. :) The next morning we would wake up at horrifying hours such as 4am and our parents (who had just gone to bed) would get up with us. The rule was that we had to sit on the top step together until our parents went down and turned on the tree lights and set up cameras and video cameras first. We still do this whole scenario (except for the sleeping arrangements) when we are both in town at Mom’s for Christmas. Sorry that was a long description, but it’s such a happy, good memory for me. :)

8. ALWAYS have Blueberry muffins for Christmas morning breakfast.

9. With Maddox, we’ve started reading him the Christmas story (Jesus) all through December and then HE gets to sit in front of the tree on Christmas Eve and “read” the story to us. Until he can read the whole thing himself, it makes for some very sweet and heartwarming video memories to hear him tell it the way he understands it.

10. It’s not Christmas unless you listen to Dolly Parton’s “I’ll Be Home With Bells On”. I drive everyone nuts singing it every year when I show up at my Mom’s door for the holiday. :)

Thank you Amanda! We share in the tradition of riding around looking at Christmas lights and the LOVE for Christmas!

Names: Harper (left) and Annabel
Age: 17 months
Parent’s first name: Josh and Nicole
City & State: Buford, GA

Outfits come from:
Shirt: Old Navy
Skirt: Cherokee from Target
Tights: Baby Gap
Shoes: Payless
Out and About: walking around downtown in Buford, Georgia
Photo credit and Submitted by: Nicole Puckett

Favorite clothing brands:  Crazy 8, Baby Gap, Target
Philosophy on clothing style:  My philosophy is simple, comfortable separates that are interchangeable. I also like modern, unique handmade pieces from my mom or Etsy.

I am so excited for Christmas! Its totally my favorite holiday. I get a little excited.

My Fun Friday Finds this week are a couple of gift guides for budding artists.

I took my friend Amanda to Ikea in Atlanta last September for our girls’ weekend….she forced me, she had never been ;) We had a great time and its always fun to watch someone’s reaction when they go to Ikea for the first time. (apparently, she’s not the first I dragged there for their first shopping experience there…).

One of my favorite section is the kids’ area. And of course the price is ridiculously good for the value and of course I buy way more than intended to.

BUT we did find a gem! I have been looking for and researching easels and just could not get myself to buy this one (even though its still on my wishlist, I love everything Land of Nod). We found the Ikea Mala Easel for…brace yourself….$14.99! You can buy the roll of paper which is attachable, chalks and markers since it has two sides, (we pretty much bought the whole Mala series) two kids can share, you can fold it flat and save space.

SO AWESOME.

BUT wait! That’s not all.

I saw this in Target today. It is the RoseArt Color Playhouse.  The kids can use crayons, markers, or paints to personalize the house…and again its only $14.99! There are now so many of these types of color playhouses to choose from, but you can’t beat this price and who doesn’t love Target?!

Have a great weekend!

From Michele of  Michele Calderon Photography:

My favorite is one we’ve done since my kids were little.  Every year, I wrap 24 Christmas books and put them in a basket, and each night during December, one of the kids opens one before bed and we read it.  When we first started, I didn’t have 24 books, so we borrowed from the library.  (Since they were holiday books, they could only be out for 2 weeks, so they got special “open me first” wrapping paper LOL!)  But now we have more than enough……and the kids (ages 9, 12, and 14) still really look forward to it – they won’t even let me get rid of the old board and pop up books!

Many of our books were chosen from reading the Chinaberry catalog.  My favorite source for children’s books – you can get lost for hours in their detailed catalog.  www.chinaberry.com.  You’d love it!

Not long after Michele contacted me, Katie emailed this link for the same traditions and it shows ideas on how to do it as well as book recommendations!

Thank you Michele, this will be a new tradition for us THIS year. We LOVE books too and this fantastic idea of a tradition and couldn’t wait to start next year so I ordered some last night :)

Do you have favorite Christmas traditions? If you’d like to participate on here, let me know! I’ll be posting throughout December.

Child’s first name: Grant
Age: 1, will be 2 next month
Parent’s first name: Chuck and Mel
City & State: Cincinnati, OH

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today’s guest post is from a dear friend, fellow shoe lover, and fantastic wedding designer, Lisa Konecny of E Events. I love how thoughtful and creative she is with this! Read on…

Our ”gifts“ as hosts {cooking, cleaning decorating, setting an elegant table} can seem monumental at times.  Many of us {read; ME} put an extraordinary amount of pressure on ourselves to personally hand pick each ingredient and cook every last recipe to perfection.  I’ve been a hostess for various holidays for as many years as I can remember, so switching gears for this Thanksgiving and being invited as a *gasp* guest has been welcomed challenge.

I still very much wanted to have a personal touch on the holiday, of course, and so I have set my focus on a lovely hostess gift.

This year, I am a guest at my beloved Jeffrey’s mother’s house.  She is the most delightful woman and I would consider her to be the same kind of hostess as I am.  She is a marvelous chef, she can feng shui a table like it’s nobody’s business and she is driven solely by the comfort of her guests in her home. Because of this, she rarely accepts contributions or assistance.

This year my hostess will receive a “Day After Thanksgiving Survival Kit.” A bottle of wine seems so ordinary, her table will be set beautifully and her menu is set, so …she can enjoy the components to her kit on the weary day after:

Packed in a set of tins from IKEA, she will enjoy:
*Hoagie Rolls {For turkey sandwiches!}
*Gourmet Dry Soup Mix {Just add water!}
*Cranberry Vanilla Hand Soap {Kickin’ off the Holiday season}
*Shea Cashmere Hand Cream {She will likely have scrubbed lots of potatoes and washed some pots and pans!}
*Milk Chocolate Cherries {Jeffrey says these are favorite indulgence}

My idea and gesture is for her to barely lift a finger the next day all the while knowing that I was incredibly grateful to sit at her Thanksgiving table in a most loving and beautiful environment.

Sources:
Tins: IKEA
Hoagie Rolls: Bakery / Local Supermarket
Soup Mix: Country Gardens Cuisine {Found at TJ Maxx}
Hand Soap: TJ Maxx
Hand Cream: Bath and Body Works True Blue Spa
Milk  Chocolate Cherries: Harvest Sweets {Found at TJ Maxx}

Thank you so much Lisa! For more information on Lisa, visit her fabulous website: E Events and join her Facebook Page HERE.

Greetings from Asheville!

I am so excited to be back since we used to visit all the time. I went to an awesome boarding academy here for my senior year in high school and loved it! We are here for our annual holiday family photo session. More on our 6-year family tradition later. We met up with fellow photographers and close friends, Brandy and Sticky from Ohio for our annual fun holiday photo sessions and Garrett photographed them on Monday. We ate at Suwana’s Thai Orchid that night. Really good Pad Thai!

Afterwards, we met up to go to the Candlelight Christmas Evenings at the Biltmore Estate. We had visited there  12 years ago in the daytime but this was the first time for the Christmas show and for the girls. I have heard so many great things about it and WOW, they really transform this gorgeous home. We could not take any photos inside so the above photo was the view of what we first saw driving in…(photo from Google Images). I was in awe walking into the estate and the decor was quite impressive. One really awesome memory which stood out was the 35 ft. Douglas Fir Christmas tree in the dining room with all the huge wrapped presents under it! There was a choir singing and Christmas trees in almost every room. The whole thing from the decor to the customer service was top notch. It is a MUST do for the holidays especially if you are nearby!

Today was our actual photo session. The girls LOVE Brandy and Sticky (so do we!) and its always a ton of fun hanging out with them. They just announced some awesome news and we couldn’t be happier for them!

I will refrain from telling you what outfits the girls wore…watch for a separate post on that :)

We went to lunch at Tupelo Honey Cafe. I had grilled cheese, tomato soup, and mac n cheese. YUM. No worries, I shared with one of our girls ;) They also serve breakfast all day, my kind of place. Too bad I had already eaten breakfast at our hotel.

When you purchase tickets to the Biltmore Estate, you also have a pass to the new Antler Hill Village, (photo credit, Romantic Asheville) among other places.

LOVED. THIS. PLACE. Especially our girls. It consists of shops, restaurants, entertainment, a farm, winery, and more. Very kid-friendly and even though it was raining, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

We fell in love with Antler Hill Farm. Above photo, Gray was petting the sheep: Mia, Ma, and Mini! She was especially intrigued by the blacksmith demonstration.

There were old-fashioned toys in the stables and all around the farm for kids to play. SO. FUN.

Here is the perfect description of it from Romantic Asheville:

“With the reorganization of the Antler Hill Village area, the entire farm is more convenient to explore. The farm offers a glimpse back at Biltmore’s agricultural past. Traditional farming demonstrations take place in the Barn, including authentic blacksmithing by local craftsman Doc Cudd. The Farmyard continues to house animals that children love, and the Kitchen Garden is now a demonstration area showcasing fragrant herbs and vegetables used in Biltmore’s restaurants. “

Above, Gray and Campbell exploring the Kitchen Garden even though you can’t see it.

We loved it so much, we got season passes to the Biltmore Estate and all it comes with! (Its only $25 more per person to upgrade…kids 16 and under are free!) It is a good thing we have family moving to Asheville within the next few months :)

If you have never been to the Biltmore Estate, you need to go! Here is an excellent website for more tips and information!

This evening we stumbled upon this gem of a place to eat: Posana Cafe in the heart of downtown Asheville. Not only was the meal fantastic, (we ordered vegan/vegeterian meals) the presentation, customer service, and atmosphere was wonderful as well. Just check out the desserts we ordered!

Our time here is almost over and then we head to my hometown, Charleston, tomorrow to spend more family time for Thanksgiving! I know there are tons of things to do in Asheville, but if you are ever here for just a couple of days and nights with the family, you now have an idea for a fun two-day itinerary.

I couldn’t have done this without my trusty iPhone and Instagram App!

**Note: I will be doing a series in December of your top 10 Christmas traditions. If you would like to participate, send me an email: info@cobblestonerueblog.com with subject: Christmas Traditions. It will be fun!!

Child’s first name: Josie
Age: 3, will be 4 in January
Parent’s first name: Chuck and Mel
City & State: Cincinnati, OH

Outfit in photo(s) comes from:
Jean Jacket: H&M Kids
Shirt: H&M Kids
Tie: Handmade by Aunt Brandy
Skirt: crewcuts
Tights: H&M Kids
Shoes: Sam & Libby purchased at Endless
Out and about: photo session and preschool
Photo credit and Submitted by: Aunt Brandy J

Favorite clothing brands:  Children’s Place, Old Navy, Target, and The Gap
Philosophy on clothing style:  To be completely honest lately my philosophy on clothes, is whatever is clean ;)!! and the fact that I am so tired of pink and purple for girls.

Would you like to submit an Out & About? We are now looking for Fall and Winter submissions. Click HERE for details.

I just love Urban Outfitters.

I love how their style stands out and their branding. It also helps they belong in the same family as Anthropologie :) While in New Orleans, I got some great finds and REALLY needed certain new things and thought I’d share:

Kimchi Blue Front Pocket Lady Satchel

(I haven’t bought a trusty handbag in 4 years and needed to graduate from a diaper bag)

Fun new Oxford shoes Garrett found for me….I haven’t had one of these since I attended Catholic school in Scotland! Can’t find the exact ones online, but they’ve got some great ones you have to check out. Also some fun tights for the season so I can still wear dresses and keep warm.

Best thing is both items are under $100 :)

Have a great weekend!